Add Wikipedia entries to Google search results

When the Googlepedia add-on is displayed, click the title hyperlink, and then at the next screen click the Download Now button to start installing the add-on. When Firefox displays the Software Installation dialogue box, wait for the Install Now button to become active and then click it.

The Googlepedia add-on is really small so it only takes a moment to install. When it has finished, click the Restart Firefox button in the Add-ons dialogue box. After that, click Restart again. When Firefox reappears, there will be an opportunity to donate some cash to Googlepedia’s author; alternatively, open a new tab, go to Google and start using it straight away. Here, for example, we have looked for hiking information and there is the Wikipedia entry, to the right of Google’s own search results. Next we are going to click a link on the Wikipedia entry Hiking Trails.

Notice what happens when a link in the Wikipedia entry is clicked.­ Googlepedia interprets it as another Google search, enters the link text automatically into the search box and then returns the results. This makes it very easy to use a Wikipedia entry as the basis for Google-based research, assuming it’s got a decent series of internal links. This does not affect the Google results which, when clicked, will still open the relevant website, full screen.

At the top of every Wikipedia ‘window’ that appears on the Google search page are some useful controls. Clicking ‘View on Wikipedia’ opens the Wikipedia site, while clicking Expand will unfold the Wikipedia entry to fill the browser window – to return to half view, click the Shrink link at the top left. To temporarily remove the Wikipedia window, click Hide and to reinstate it, click the Googlepedia link. These commands make it possible to have Googlepedia running all the time but only visible when appropriate.

As befits something so straightforward, Googlepedia only has one setting to tweak. Click the Tools menu and then choose Add-ons. If there are lots installed, scroll through the list to Googlepedia and then click the Options button. When the Options dialogue box opens, click once to remove the tick next to ‘Turn internal Wikipedia links into Google searches’ and then click OK to close the dialogue. Click the red ‘x’ at the top right to close the Add-ons dialogue box.

Go back to Firefox and reload the page (otherwise Firefox won’t take note of the changes we made). Now when we click on the same link – in this example it’s ‘hiking trail’ again – instead of running a new Google search based on the link, Firefox opens Wikipedia proper in a full browser window. Although the default setting is probably more flexible (external Wikipedia links will still open external websites as normal), some people will prefer to have a Wikipedia entry appear once on the first page and thereafter have Firefox and Google revert to ‘normal’ behaviour.